There was no need or expectation for a movie based on transforming robot toys to be as absurdly hardcore as it was. Forty years ago, in 1986, Transformers, a moderately successful animated series — connected to a wildly successful toy line from Hasbro — got into the movie franchise business with The Transformers: The Movie. Famously, or infamously, this film murdered several beloved heroic robots in the first 10 minutes, and then put the most heroic Autobot of them all, Optimus Prime (the recently departed Peter Cullen), in his grave before the first act was complete.
For at least one generation of sci-fi and animation fans, The Transformers: The Movie was an oddity because of just how hard it went in terms of mortal stakes combined with a wild soundtrack. Was this kind of thing uncommon with ‘80s kids movies? Maybe, maybe not: In 1985, the Ewoks movie, The Battle for Endor, began with a young child’s entire family getting slaughtered in the first five minutes, but for some reason, that traumatic event didn’t prompt Lucasfilm to do a Battle for Endor “Apology Tour” when everyone who was freaked out by such an event was now old enough to worry about mortgage rates. However, Transformers is on a faux-apology tour, which was a tongue-in-cheek way for Hasbro to acknowledge, four decades later, that the demise of Optimus Prime probably was a little much at the time. So, should you go see the newly rereleased The Transformers: The Movie in theaters? The answer is yes, but not because anybody needs to heal any trauma.
